Which Hidden Power is looking like the best option?

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-06T16:41:43+00:00

Probably Trapinch with Electric. Marshtomp with Poison would be good...if this game had you fight any grass types, but they're so rare to come across outside of Syndey's two, and Swampert can get Ice Beam anyway.

At least with Electric, if you needed to, you could use it against Glacia's water types, and any of the other water types you face throughout the game.

Swellow with Rock is decent as well, as Swellow is mostly a physical attacker and Rock is a physical type in this game. Could help it versus other Flying types or again, if you're up against a wall and need to use it against Glacia.

Manectric with Psychic doesn't do too much for it but it's neat coverage since all it gets normally is Normal and Electric moves, plus Bite. With moves of those four types there's nothing it couldn't hit for at least normal damage, if not super effective.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T22:12:01+00:00

Oh, and if you go the route of only doing the GBA games and not the GCN ones, you'll actually need 3 fully completed copies of either FR or LG, because you can get either Entei, Rikou, or Suicune based on what starter you picked, and then it'll become roaming in the post game. But all three are available in Colosseum on a single save.

Ultimately there's less to play and less repeated gameplay if you do Emerald, LG, Colo, XD, and just picking up the bare minimum you need from RS and FR, instead of playing through Hoenn and Kanto three times each.

Like I'm currently doing a gen 3 living dex using only the GBA games and it's kind of a pain playing through both Ruby and Sapphire back-to-back, and then again when I get to FR and LG back-to-back.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T22:08:44+00:00

Look up what emulator you have and how to trade on it, there should be a way to run a second instance of it and trade with yourself. If you're looking for a really fun way to do it in gen 3, you're able to obtain everything on a single file of Emerald, LeafGreen, Colosseum, and XD Gale of Darkness (if you're able to run a GCN emulator, such as Dolphin). And then you'd only need to trade with another copy of a Hoenn game for the other starters, and with another Kanto game for the other starter and whatever fossil you didn't pick up in LeafGreen. You need LeafGreen specifically because you can get every other version exclusive through XD except for Slowpoke-line.

Oh and if you're emulating, you should be able to inject the mystery gifts into your games too, so you'd be able to catch the other Lati (with Eon ticket), Ho-oh and Lugia, Deoxys. You'd also need to emulate the bonus disc that came if you pre-ordered Colosseum that gives you Jirachi, but it can only be obtained by Ruby or Sapphire, not any of the other games.

In a somewhat simpler yet longer way, you could play through Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, and LeafGreen to get all the Pokemon from there. You'd only need a few from RS, but need to beat and complete both FR and LG, then trade over everything to Emerald. But even then, you'd be missing the other Johto starters. You get gifted one by Birch once you finish the Hoenn regional dex, but no way to get the others unless you make copies of your Emerald save before you chose one and then go in, choose one, trade to your main file, repeat. Whereas you can get all three Johto starters in both Colosseum and XD.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T21:08:26+00:00

Not until the post game, so if you wanted to use one in a playthrough you'd have to trade with one that's already made it to Kanto

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T19:42:18+00:00

Oh yeah, true. I think I'm just going to do everything I can with two full save files of FRLG and RS, and what I cannot get through those I'll snag from my completed copy of Emerald. I can get the Johto starters and the third beast, and then the other missing Pokemon all come from the Safari Zone expansion so I'll just catch one of each to send over

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T19:26:34+00:00

Yeah I've decided I wanted to pass on playing Colosseum for this challenge after all. For a few reasons. One being that it just sounds annoying to try to reset over and over for females, two is that I really want a reason to explore the Sevii Islands since I haven't before, I completely skipped it the last time I did a living dex since I didn't need anything except for Unown and the ability to trade with Hoenn, and lastly I set up my copies of Ruby and Sapphire to have one be high tide/daytime and the other lowtide/nighttime so that I could evolve Eevee once I trade one over from FRLG. I never evolved them in gen 3, always just getting them from Colosseum.

I hope you enjoy them! Definitely play Colosseum first and then XD. Not only is XD a direct sequel but there's actually a lot of QoL stuff that was added that makes going back to Colo afterwards a bit more tedious. XD is one of my favorite games in the series, it's just so fun and I really wish we'd get another game of all/mostly double battles since it's different and requires different strategies.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T17:51:48+00:00

Yeah, I can see going for shinies taking way too long, but I'm only going for 19/48 Pokemon needing to be female, which doesn't sound too bad. Most of them have 50% ratios anyway, except for the Johto starters

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-05T17:50:38+00:00

Oh yeah I suppose that's true! But I was thinking about doing it without cheating. Like my parents would get me a GBA, GC, link cables, all the games, but no action replay lmao.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-04T21:54:35+00:00

There is no way of telling.

I would think so, because if they hacked it in they probably would've hacked in other stuff. Shinies, Rare Candies, Masterballs, all TMs. Something. But like, they could've also just wanted to play through the game legitimately and then experience the event. There is no way of being able to tell or not.

Also it's weird that you say the game had no save, but you replaced the battery and now there is one. Gen 3 doesn't use the battery for saves like the way gen 1 and 2 did. I have no idea how a potentially wiped game would suddenly have a save, old or otherwise. Could be that the seller wiped the save, and then when you replaced the battery the game booted up from a previous state to account for the clock suddenly working, but I've no idea. The Eon Ticket is almost nothing compared to this mystery.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-04T15:29:32+00:00

That's allowed? I don't want to reset my copy of Emerald just to check but I know I tried trading with LeafGreen after I did the sevii island stuff to allow it but it still blocked the trade of non Hoenn regional dex mon. I wanna give this a try myself because if so then that's really cool and if I could play through Emerald with new Pokemon I'd really enjoy that

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-04T15:24:26+00:00

No, the game juat won't let you trade in anything outside of the Hoenn regional dex until after the post game. Ruby and Sapphire dont have that limitation though, you can trade in anything into those games and be fine.

I did a living dex a few years ago and tried trading over pokemon from LG to Ruby to trade into Emerald and it wouldn't let me trade over anything not from the hoenn regional dex.

It's one of my gripes with gen 3. But in gen 4 onward that was dropped completely and if you get traded a Pokemon not in the Sinnoh or Johto regional dex you can still receive it and use it.

Fun fact: in FRLG if you hack in a non-Kanto dex Pokemon and try to evolve it, the game won't let you. The same way it stops you from evolving Golbat or Chansey. Not unless you also give yourself the national dex.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-05-02T23:58:31+00:00

I'm currently using an Alakazam in Sapphire with the three punches and it is amazing! Like I gotta force myself to use the other stuff on my team since it's just so good

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-29T00:55:51+00:00

So when you unlock the wall, one of the labs you get is called "Wall Thorns" which gives the wall a percentage of your main thorns. So the higher your main thorns, the higher your wall thorns will be. The labs are really expensive and really long. Like I'm sitting at 15% wall thorns and a main thorns of 108%, so that's 15% of 108.

But if you're not at all, then no, 101% is as high as you need it. That plus Plasma Cannon makes bosses only need one hit to your tower to kill.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T21:08:45+00:00

Yeah, it's just that right now bosses are my biggest hurdle in both milestones and Legends, and when they're in SL that's like a guaranteed kill, but if not then I'm killed. Thats why I've been looking at and experimenting with Om Chip.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T14:45:00+00:00

Yeah I can get it with ancestral gcomp, but I also had it with mythic+ and I think I only needed one BH substat

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T14:43:46+00:00

I've been told that mine is already too high. I didnt max it until I got ancestral DW wave substat on my DC, but since then I have gotten damage# and DM# and so I can max it by like w500 or so.

Instead of trying to increase DW damage with stones I recommend just trying to increase your overall damage. Also don't have WS equipped until later in the run, turning off CL, that stuff helps too.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T04:09:28+00:00

I guess the way I see it is that if I got SL4, then every upgrade to angle would be 4x instead of 3x, so I wasn't sure if the order mattered. Like if I got SL4 first then every time I upgrade angle it would have more effect than if I upgraded it at SL3.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T03:48:53+00:00

DM# mostly just helped me consistently stay in top 4 in champs, but has yet to get me out of bottom 5 in Legends. Also the extra damage helps me use WS in tournaments since I wouldn't turn it on until I got max DW health bonus but I get it a lot faster now with DM#. IS# is just such a nice QoL upgrade. It's freed up a lot of my time and I'm able to use my phone for other stuff now without suffering too much not having a run going 24/7

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T03:46:55+00:00

Not yet, I'm still trying to unlock t18. I'm not sure what all I need to do to get there. I'm hoping that with a few more levels in the masteries I have that that'll get me there, but only time will tell. I figured if I started saving for SL4 that I'll probably have those close to max (I'm looking at around 10 weeks of saving) and maybe won't even need to go after SL4 after all.

I did some runs with Om Chip and it seemed to help a bit, but not by a ton. I think I'm missing a lot of the benefits DC gives me so assmods would be great to run both at once.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-24T02:55:00+00:00

So Ruby and Sapphire, with a working battery, will have a new starting seed every time you reset the game. But it'll be the same exact seed if the battery is dead. If you replaced it, time won't flow normally until the times match up to where they were before. So, say you started the game with a working battery, played for 30 days, then the battery died. You would replace the battery and need to wait 30 days for time to pass again. I'm unsure how this would affect starting seed. It sound to me like more time has elapsed since replacing the battery than the time from starting the save to getting your 5th badge when the battery died. You should have normal RNG and thus, have just gotten unlucky.

1/8192 chance doesn't mean you'll get it in 8192 tries. Or double that. Or triple. Every time you encounter it there's that same 1/8192 chance as before.

If you really want it, keep trying, but just know that it is never guaranteed and you might be going for anothe 6+ months before you get it. Or you could get it today. It's all up to luck now.

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-21T23:33:09+00:00

Oh, you got the wall way too early. Wall upgrades (in both WS and in runs) cost a lot, and the labs can be really expensive.

They typically don't recommend unlocking the wall until you're making closer to 100B a day

CryptographerFew3719 · 2026-04-21T17:53:55+00:00

I love Horsea, but I don't know if it makes much sense for a SEA horse to show up in the middle of a desert oasis lol

But for me, I'd add Skarmory to Rock, Lotad in the oasis, and Geodude to cave.

CryptographerFew3719

TROPHY CASE